Draft:Bishop Boulous El Khoury

Archbishop Boulos El-Khoury (1896-1995), whose name before his ordination was Halim Ibn El-Khoury Gerges, was the grandson of curate Andraous Ibn Sheikh Hanna El-Khoury Gerges El-Maqdisi. He was from the town of Bataaboura in Koura.

Archbishop Boulos El-Khoury climbed up the ecclesiastical rank until taking charge of the dioceses of Sidon, Tire, Marjayoun, Hasbaya and Rashaya in the Greek Orthodox community.

He was one of the generation of clergy, Christians, and revolutionaries whose religious outlook, or faith, was not confined to worship and preaching, but inseparably linked faith to daily behaviour. It linked faith to the defence of freedom and man, and linked worship to truthfulness. For him, it was as if religion was the strategic dimension of the world.

His hard tone and direct speech brought him closer to being an orator than a preacher, an advocate of revolution and of fighting for the right.

Archbishop Boulos was one of the few Christian clergy who entered the mosque repeatedly. He stood there and was accepted as a speaker His vision was that it was not permissible to look at people as divided categories. People should be called on above all to live; thus, they must be together, no matter the circumstances. It is not necessarily that anyone who disagrees with me must be killed.

He believed that Lebanon was not built on sectarian and feudal grounds, and called for the separation of religion from state.





References

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Open Library Archieves : https://archive.org/details/1_20240724_20240724_1104